Medical Instruments in the Roman World

Abstract

By the beginning of the 1st century AD Roman medical instruments had begun to acquire the distinctive forms which they were to retain, more or less unchanged, for the next half millennium. They were carefully-designed, highly-crafted precision tools well-adapted to the range of surgical interventions and operations described in the contemporary medical texts. Their versatility and multiplicity of function is discussed, as also is the evidence derived from apparently complete instrumentaria, which sheds light on the form of medical practise undertaken by the people who used them.